The Perfect Recluse
by kangeiko
Summary: Voldemort rose again. There was a big battle. Voldemort won. The end? Voldemort / Severus.


TITLE: THE PERFECT RECLUSE

DISCLAIMER: All recognizable characters are the property of JK Rowling and a few large and powerful corporations. All the rest is mine.

SUMMARY: Voldemort rose again. There was a big battle. Voldemort won. The end?

PAIRING: Voldemort/Severus Snape, Snape/?

RATING: PG-13

ARCHIVE: No.

FEEDBACK: Yep.

NOTES: I wanted to make Voldemort into a sympathetic character. I'm not sure if I succeeded, but I'm pretty sure I made him crazy. Oh, well. The title is from Peter Whitehead – "The perfect recluse. The suicide who is still alive." The content was partly inspired by "Reveille", by A. E. Housman:

"Look not in my eyes, for fear

They mirror true the sight I see,

And there you find your face too clear

And love it and be lost like me.

One the long night through must lie

Spent in star-defeated sighs,

But why should you as well as I

Perish? gaze not in my eyes."

Sometimes, when I am alone, I weep.

It never lasts.

I am a Lord, after all – almost a god. Almost. Gods do not weep. People like me do not weep. We look for it in others – we search for it on blotchy, reddened faces. In a world where things are real with a word, tears are the only real gift we can treasure. The only thing I can treasure, at least, and I choose to be selfish in this regard.

Now, as on that first night, I feel him looking at me with doll eyes. Impossibly large and dark, shadows fringing them like thick lashes as the wanted tears slid slowly down. Tears for me. Because I asked for them. Because I wanted them. But they are not real, any more than his eyes.

I looked at him that first night and wondered what it would take to wound him. To break him. To make him one of mine. Not like the others, certainly. Not like them because of his eyes, because of the bow of his lips and the curl of a sneer always present. Not like them because of those long, delicate fingers, belonging to an artist or a healer. An artist, in his case, I think. So gifted in bequeathing pain to those willing. So gifted in denying it to so many.

Did I want him to hurt me? Maybe. Maybe. Even I feel out of control sometimes. Even I feel the pounding in my ears sometimes, the slow thickening of my blood in my veins. Even I want my own real tears, brought out of me when the world dissolved into clouds and vapour.

Too much power, they warned us as children, is bad for you. They never told us why.

I have a feeling they never knew.

It is too late now. Not when he looks at me with those doll eyes, so hard and dark and glossy. I've always liked his eyes. I always thought that after his death, I would keep them forever, locked in a pool of his tears beneath the thick glossy wrapping of a jar lid. I have the eyes of a doll, I'd want to think, in a jar by my bed. So I could look at his tears upon waking.

There are still so many tears in him. So many in me too, perhaps, but I cannot tell anymore. So many things went wrong, but I cannot weep for them anymore.

One by one, all my chosen followers deserted me. Oh, we won – that goes without saying. We won, and things should have been glorious. There should have been no weeping.

There was not.

The world shrivelled up and died without the tears to fall onto the soil.

That, you see, I had not thought of.

I had not thought of what would happen without suffering to keep us in check. Everything could be ours at a thought. A simple thought. All you had to do was want it. All you had to do was know what you wanted.

A simple thing. A simple thought. And, one by one, the complicated thoughts began to die out. First it was love – too complicated to last; forever doomed, no tears shed at the funeral. I planted flowers in the ground and watched them grow. They reached my neck and tried to strangle me with their grasping hands, so I cut them down. Their blood watered the ground.

Love died. I did not mourn it.

Hate followed soon after, putting up a fight until the last. Hate was cherished by too many to be given up. In the end, though, we had not enough tears to go around. There were too few of us left to bother hating anymore. Hate withered. Some cried.

Not I.

I planted more flowers. They did not grow.

Doubt blossomed. It grew thick limbs and twined ivy around my legs, planting me into the ground. It made me wonder if I was right after all. If the world truly was a better place.

I cut it down. Was there ever an alternative?

No.

Not until I returned home and saw those doll eyes again, large and dark and unblinking, and always, always so accepting... That was his one redeeming feature, even when he turned his back on me. He never expected better of anyone, least of all himself. He accepted the mistakes and the hatred and most of all the tears, and that made him saintly in my eyes. That, and the steady gaze of his dark eyes. The tears that only I have seen. There was a curious need to protect him afterwards, to make sure that no one else ever saw those tears. Selfishness, but in a world where you can have everything you want with a word, the things you cannot obtain in such a manner are those you cherish most of all. I cherished his tears. I cherished the pains I took to find them beneath that cold, glossy exterior. So like a doll's hard, impersonal body, the cool slickness of his skin, the joints supple and smooth and entirely lifeless, the eyes closing gently. So like a doll's mouth, hard and unyielding, the skin almost cold beneath my fingertips. No movement at my touch.

Not even I can do miracles.

We are still not perfect. Nor were we that night when the moon was out and stayed unseen behind a cloud of pain. Mistakes on all sides, but we were the only ones that lived to regret ours later. One brief moment of impatience, of jealousy, because someone else had seen those dark eyes blink back tears. Why else would he leave me? Why else?

Still clinging to a piece of dead wood, soft and warm and supple in my hand. Even with this I could not make him return, despite his body being there. His eyes were even darker than before, even more vacant. I knew. I have always known. And my mistake was my impatience, for I could have made him return to me somehow. I could have.

I could I could I could.

We all make mistakes. Even gods. Even in this perfect and deserted world my impatience has created.

There is still a debt to be paid, I think. An apology to make that could not be offered to a real person. No – only to those lovely, lifeless eyes. Only they would understand.

I smile at them, and grip the dead piece of wood a little tighter. So much life in such a dead thing. A fitting, instrument, I think, for my gift to him. All I can offer him in return for my impatience, for not even I can do miracles.

My mouth forms the words, and my eyes close. The not-real tears stop.

And this isn't any more real than before. We live in a dream, and he will never be real again.

Just his eyes remain, floating in a pool of tears. The realest things in the room.

Sometimes, when I am alone, I weep.

It never lasts.

fin


End file.
